Paula's Choice Resist Smoothing Primer Serum Review

Truth bomb: I don’t like primers. It’s not that I don’t see their purpose; they “prime” skin post skin care for makeup, I get it. It’s just that…I’m lazy. I’m a lazy beauty editor who will do anything to streamline my morning routine. And, unfortunately, that means cutting extraneous steps (e.g. primer) from the process.

But after testing the Paula’s Choice Resist Smoothing Primer for Best of Beauty, I may soon consider squeezing one more product into my a.m. routine.

OK, so the primer is Paula’s Choice’s answer to makeup — kind of. The lightweight gel is made with aloe leaf extract to calm and hydrate skin and coffee extract to stimulate circulation, and it has SPF 30. (It also has a bunch of texture-smoothing ingredients — isododecane, dimethicone/vinyl dimethicone crosspolymer, etc. — but in an effort to not bore you with science-speak, we’ll just go with aloe and coffee. Sound good?)

And when the clear gel is applied (I slathered it on after my usual moisturizer-and-sunscreen combo because you can never have enough SPF), it gives skin a slightly dewy and matte finish. Sounds impossible, but trust me: The gel leaves behind a subtle sheen in all the places you would want a bit of shine (cheekbones), while still remaining matte in the T-zone. Cool, right? I thought so, which is why I happily continued to wear the primer for weeks after we were done testing for Allure‘s Best of Beauty Awards. It made applying my BB cream even easier — it glided nicely over the primer — and kept my BB cream in place (with minimal midday sheen) for most of the day. (Yeah, yeah, I know that’s the exact premise behind primer. Hush.) To be honest, I’m still using it on a daily basis, which means maybe I’m not such a lazy beauty editor after all.